Where are ya Canadian people?

Too many exciting things going on north of the border for Canadians to attend a playoff hockey game?

Come on now Maple Leaf fans. I hear quite a bit of bickering about how the Leafs have quite the following.

I also heard that hockey was king in Canada.

I also thought that Canadians enjoyed attending hockey games on occasion.

But 1,063?

Your neighborhood Starbucks gets their 1,063rd customer before 8 a.m.

That’s the freshman class at Judson for pete’s sake!

The Marlies probably have that many media credentials out.

That’s the lunch rush at the Alamo Café!

That’s how many folks ride the riverboats on a moderately busy night.

Heck… they got twice that many folks on a Wednesday night in November in that gad awful joint in Austin to watch the Ice Bats play, the Chaparral Ice Center.

But for a hockey game in the mecca of puckdom?

Um, Marlie/Leaf fans, methinks you can do better.

And the next time I hear a Leaf’s fan get on his/her high horse about the good ole days about Bobby Baun and Dave Keon, please pardon me while I stick a blue sock down their throat.

ENCOURAGING SIGNS

Nice the see the Rampage come back once again. This group of guys don’t really have the word quit in their vocabulary. But if they want to see the series tied up, they are going to have to stop playing from behind.

Nice to see them score twice on the power play against the top penalty killing team during the regular season. Nice to see the Rampage penalty killers do their job, stopping a strong Marlie PP on five chances, including a major on Chris Durno. (Hopefully, Chris won’t get more punishment for his cross check).

Nice to see the Rampage spread the scoring around as usual and not depend on one or two guys for offense. Having Brendan Bell get a goal from the blueline helped. Mike Zigomanis had two assists and even goaltender Al Montoya got on the score sheet with a helper on Bell’s goal. (not to be nitpicky, but isn’t there some established amount of times you can write “helper” in a newspaper story? Today’s stringer was in love with the word).

Nice to see the Rampage outshot the Marlies as well (31-28).

Nice to see a bunch of folks heading over to Fatso’s to watch the game.

Probably close to 1,063 of ya.

ELSEWHERE

Nice to see the Wolves go down! Milwaukee’s Cal O’Reilly scored 6:07 into overtime after Josh Langfeld’s third goal of the game with seven minutes left tied it up after the Wolves shot out to a 3-1 lead. Once again, NICE!

In front of three times as many people who stand for O Canada, by the way.

Former Rampage goaltender David LeNeveu is 1-1 after Portland’s overtime win Thursday night. LeNeveu stopped 32 of 33 shots in the series opener.